John Edwards’ secret life is nothing compared with Benito Mussolini’s as presented in the melodramatic “Vincere” by Marco Bellocchio, one of Italy’s most respected directors.

Long before he became Il Duce, Mussolini married a woman named Ida Dalser, who bore him a son. After rising to power, Mussolini discarded Ida and son in favor of another woman, to whom he also was wed.

But Ida was not to be silenced and insisted to the end that she was the dictator’s real wife. The paperwork that could prove her claim conveniently disappeared, and she was confined for 11 years to a mental asylum run by sadistic nuns, where she died. (In one telling scene, Ida asks the boss nun for help and is told that she must suffer in this life to be happy in the next.)

When her son reached manhood, he too was locked away for life. It’s hard to tell where fact ends and fiction begins, but I suspect that Bellocchio wasn’t worried about embellishing the truth.

Take the scene in which Ida, disguised as a nun, temporarily escapes captivity. Her flight is accompanied by thunder and lightning seemingly unleashed by a vengeful God.

Bellocchio’s bigger-than-life story requires over-the-top performances, which are provided by Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Ida and Filippo Timi as the young Mussolini and, later, his grown son.

Daniele Cipri’s highly stylized lensing and Carlo Crivelli’s bold score add to the movie’s flamboyant aura. But then, the story of a bombastic dictator deserves a bombastic telling.